The Popular Science Monthly, July, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900Various
Science
The Popular Science Monthly, July, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
These characteristics of the Institute were impressed upon it
from the beginning by the master hand of its founder and first
president, William B. Rogers. President Rogers aimed to establish ‘a
comprehensive, polytechnic college’ which should provide a ‘complete
system of industrial education.’ It is now generally recognized that a
complete system of industrial education would consist of three parts:
First, manual training schools, for developing the eye and hand, not
with the object of producing artisans, but for training alone. Second,
trade schools for special training in the technique of the different
trades. Third, higher technical schools for training in the fundamental
principles of the sciences, and fitting men in the broadest way to
become leaders in the application of the sciences to the arts. Manual
training is now generally recognized as a desirable addition to every
scheme of public instruction and a powerful adjunct to every technical
school. It was not indicated in the original scheme of the Institute,
but was added in 1877 through the wisdom of President Runkle, as a
result of the exhibition in Philadelphia of the results obtained in
Russia by instruction of this kind. Trade schools, for the training of
artisans, were never included in the scheme of President Rogers, and
are not now, either in America or Europe, considered suitable adjuncts
to so-called technical schools, although they are very desirable
as special and independent institutions. The original plan for the
Institute contemplated simply a school of the last-named kind, together
with provision for evening lectures, to which outsiders should be
admitted, and which it was expected would be of benefit to artisans;
and also the establishment of a museum of arts, and of a society of
arts which should hold regular meetings and which should be the medium
for the communication to the public of scientific discoveries and
inventions. It may be as well to state here that the museum of arts was
never established except in so far as the separate departments of the
Institute have accumulated collections; but that the society of arts,
which held its first meeting in 1862, has been continued to the present
time. Many important inventions, as for instance the earliest forms of
the Bell telephone, were first publicly exhibited at its meetings.
In outlining his plan, President Rogers showed wonderful keenness and
foresight. With the added experience of the succeeding forty years,
it would scarcely be possible to make a more complete statement of
what experience has shown to be the best method of organization. In
fact, his Scope and Plan of the School of Industrial Science of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology may be said to be the first step
toward a new order of things in education, and contains the first clear
statement of the desirability of teaching physics, mining, metallurgy
and other branches by the laboratory method.
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